Lyddie Worthen is brave enough to stand up to the bear that invades the family cabin and when her family loses everything, Lyddie summons that same courage and goes to work in a mill in Lowell, Massachusetts. It's a hard life, and it takes time for Lyddie to come to terms with the hard work, the difficult working conditions and the politics of the women who hold the mill jobs. In the background, Luke Stevens, a steady Quaker man, is waiting in hopes that Lyddie will some day be his wife. What a powerful, insightful story of being a woman in those difficult times.